This invention relates generally to social networking systems, and in particular to determining measures of influence for objects maintained by a social networking system.
A social networking system typically maintains a variety of objects, which each represent data maintained by the social networking system. Examples of objects maintained by a social networking system include: a user profile, a page, a page post, a status update, a photo, a video, a link, a shared content item, a gaming application achievement, a check-in event at a local business, a brand page, or any other type of content. As users perform interactions with social networking system objects, the social networking system stores information identifying an interaction, a user performing the interaction, and an object associated with the interaction. Examples of interactions include viewing an object, commenting on an object, sharing an object, expressing a preference for an object (“liking” the object), or other types of interactions.
The social networking system may determine the relevance of an object to a user based on interactions between the user and the object. For example, the number of times the user interacts with an object, the frequency with which a user interacts with the object, communications by the user associated with the object, an expression of the user's preference for the object, and/or other interactions with the object may be used to determine the relevance of the object to the user. In addition to allowing users to interact with objects, the social networking system allows users to establish connections with other users to share information. These connections between users may be used to identify objects likely to be of interest to a user. For example, if two users connected to each other frequently communicate via the social networking system, the social networking system may infer that an object relevant to one of the users is likely to be also relevant to the other user.
Determining an object's relevance to a user based on the object's relevance to other users connected to the user has limitations. For example, a first object may be very relevant to a first user, but not relevant to a second user associated with the first user. Determining relevance based on user associations does not account for the universal relevance of the object to users throughout the social networking system (the object's “influence” within the social networking system). Additionally, determining an object's relevance based on connections between users does not account for users being in different geographic regions. For example, if a user accesses the social networking system while on vacation in a foreign country, objects associated with local businesses and tourist attractions may be less likely to be identified as relevant to the user, as other users connected to the user are unlikely to have interactions with objects associated with entities in the foreign country.